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Twitter 101

I joined twitter a few months ago and like John never really understood what it was all about. The twitter site does not do a very good job of explaining why you should use it or what you should do after you sign-up. So I let it sit and did nothing with it. I then read on a local bloggers site (Miss604) about some fun going on at twitter and decided to revisit twitter and how I could use it.

What is twitter?

twitter is a micro blogging system. If you currently blog you most likely blog 200 words or more into your blog on a regular basis. twitter only allows you to post 140 characters per post. This is a great way for you to post links to cool sites, random thoughts, questions, trivia. The possibilities are endless really. Once you get in you start to find yourself almost in a large chat room where you can talk to others. twitter is great for networking with others and developing relationships with people you would normally not know.

How do I get involved in twitter?

The first step is to sign-up for an account. Once you are set up with the account your one third the way done. Next you will want to search for people you know, want to know or are interested in. For example John Chow, Shoemoney, Problogger and DoshDosh post frequently on twitter now. When you find someone choose to follow them. This will then send your twitter account the updates from that person and you can see what they post. Now that you are following people it is time to make it easier to be notified of when they are online. If you are on Windows then Twirl is the tool of choice and if you are on a Mac then Twitterific is very popular. Install one of these on your system and start it up. You will start to receive notifications of when someone you are following posts.

Why should I use twitter?

Networking with others in a web 2.0 world will ultimately be your chance for success in whatever you do. twitter is an easy way to get to know others and be known. Since using twitter full time for two weeks it is now my second biggest referral of traffic and will most likely be number one in a few months. If you join twitter, be helpful and try to keep advertising you do to a minimum you will gain good traffic from twitter.

Are their any cool WordPress plugin’s for twitter?

If you have a WordPress blog there are plugin’s that will allow you to send a notification to your twitter account that you made a new post. I have had been using WordTwit on my blog but another good one is Twitter Tools.

Conclusion

If you are not using twitter yet you should. Once you sign-up send me a shout out by doing an @bluefur <your message> so I can follow you.

This post was guest blogged by Gary Jones from BlueFur.com. BlueFur provides Dedicated Servers in Canada like the one that runs John Chow’s sites.

I have accounts at most of the social networking sites, but for the life of me, I just don’t “get” this one. It seems totally pointless and a waste of time. People could care less that I am eating at McDonalds… and I could care less that they are doing the same. You just picked up your dry cleaning? Good for you, I don’t care.

Synching twitter with a blog via plugin is fine as long as people remember to also do real tweets or else, not only will you be considered a spammer, but people will stop following you (and then who’ll see your spam? no one).

Best comment I ever read was “twitter feeds consisting entirely of blog post links are probably written by the same people who – when they were little – told their parents about every time they went to the toilet”.

Just want to make sure you understand that you can post from multiple devices like your web browser, phone or the software mentioned in the post.

So here is how I would explain it to my 5 year old.

1. You join.
2. You follow people you want to know.
3. Talk to those you want to know and make friends.
4. Do not use this tool for spam it is to build friendships.
5. Friends help friends and that drives traffic.

Examples of how twitter has been used.

1. Copyblogger asked out to his followers what is creativity to them. He collected the replies and used the one’s he liked in his post.

2. Problogger asked his followers for their best posts of the week. He then put them together into a post on his blog.

3. Affiliate Summit held a live trivia contest and was sending out $50 per winner of each question.

There are lots of uses for this tool. Do not think of it as a tool to just say where you are now because it has evolved already above that.

Great post Gary! I just joined 5 days ago too… it’s so addictive. It’s a drug I tell you. 😈
It’s pretty funky to use – similar to a facebook “status” update too but with more random people. I’m looking for those with similar interests too so I can get some insight on investments/deals.
If anybody else is also into investments, saving money, and making money, my twitter is http://twitter.com/trustful88

I’m still confuse. What do you mean by using twitter, setting my blog in there or whether I can blog in twitter and getting some traffic to my blog about fishing? I love fishing and I don’t know if I can blog about fishing in twitter.. need to check it out then 😈

I have to say I am in the camp that does not get this service. I think it is better said I don’t want to get this service. I saw someone above linking to Robert Scoble. Ahhhhhh! another guy that drives me crazy. He said in an article on CNet News that speakers at tech conferences should take “twitter breaks” DURING their speech in order to take in the comments of the back channel commenters. Just shoot me.

I’m another non-getter. I joined a while ago and still don’t get it. You say “find people you want to follow, and follow them”? That’s the problem – every time I’ve checked it out there is NO ONE there I have the slightest interest in. If there’s intelligent life there, it’s well hidden.

It’s interesting to see the growth of twitter over the last 6 months and how it’s growing now. Some are using twitter just to network and some for PR/marking. I use twitter for it all but still try to answer the question what are you doing?

The key to me is finding the right tools to help you manage your twitter community and decide how many followers you want to stay in contact with. You can go hyper-local on twitter or world wide and follow everyone.

Here’s a cool video tutorial: Twitter in Plain English (http://blip.tv/file/719841). I signed up a while ago and invited friends to follow me but haven’t been using it. I’d like to add the application that lets me twitter to Facebook so I don’t do it twice. Hopefully I’ll get around to that soon (after I’m done updating all my online social networking sites!).

"How I Went From Zero to Over $100,000 a Month"

The Original Dot Com Mogul

John Chow, a damn fine person, friend of the community, Ultimate Fighting Championship contestant, member of the Save the Whales Foundation, the man who controls the black market on baby seal pelts and member of the probably yo’ daddy foundation...

John Chow rocketed onto the blogging scene when he showed the income power of blogging by taking his blog from making zero to over $40,000 per month in just two years.